Zombie Rush 2 (8 page)

After they left the station, she and Skit had a few cleared blocks that they could almost leisurely walk through … until they hit an unsecured area and they started seeing small groups of Z’s almost immediately. It was approximately a twenty-block stretch from that point to where she wanted to go. Lisa hoped it wouldn’t take all night to get there because she was starting to get weary.

They ducked and hid behind dumpsters, alcoves, and corners long before being spotted by anything other than Z’s trapped inside buildings. A constant tick, tick, tick on the pavement seemed to follow them at a distance as they went. It was so constant she thought it was one of Skit’s shoes squeaking.

“What the hell is that, Skit?” she whisper-shouted.

“That ticking sound? I don’t know, but it has been following us since we left the compound. I told you about it earlier.”

“You said it felt like we were being watched.”

“I’m sure I mentioned the footsteps too.”

Lisa was just about to walk back and surprise whatever was following them when a larger group of zombies came around the corner up ahead, catching them in the open and unprepared.

“Shit.” It was exactly where they didn’t want to be. A solid brick wall lined the sidewalk beside them. No trashcans or dumpsters, not even an alcove to defend.

“Here!” Skit started running across the street toward what looked to be an alley, but was more just a pathway between buildings.

Lisa followed, cringing at the sound of his full voice. She watched as slow-moving corpses followed them across the street, knowing that a runner was bound to show up soon. The telltale scream came in the form of two behind her, coming from the opposite corner. She turned with her M4 already on her shoulder and dropped the closest with three shots but missed the second when she stumbled over the curb to the sidewalk. She ran into the alley as she heard Skit grunting while he swung his rebar at two slow movers already in the alley. His bar got stuck when he caved in the head of a teenage girl who wanted nothing more than to listen to Taylor Swift as she gnawed on his femur.

Lisa took out the second one over his shoulder and turned to face down the remaining runner, now dangerously close. She tracked him up his right forearm; elbow … chest … neck … until she finally got to his head, sending gray matter spraying out the back, and she kicked herself for not training on a more regular basis.

“Get that door open, Skit!”

“It’s locked! Who locks a door during the zombie apocalypse?”

“Use your .45 and blow through the deadbolt … do it now, man!” Lisa was getting close to panic. For some reason, she wasn’t slipping into the zone where everything clicked, but then she had been hit on the head just the night before.

The sound of Skit’s .45 reverberated off the narrow walls of the alley, and Lisa glanced to see how he did. She had to remind herself he wasn’t a cop as she saw how he tried to blow out the lock.

She grabbed his gun barrel and set it where she wanted it as she continued to fire at the slow movers. She heard more screams and knew that some runners would be following up behind the swarm.

“Turn your face away and pull the trigger, Skit.” Lisa said a prayer that it was a hollow-core steel door and not one filled with concrete. A loud report combined with the spray of metal fragments, and the door popped open. All they had time to do was get inside before the zombies were on them. They rushed across the large warehouse room to another door, just inches ahead of the zombies, hoping to get it closed but knowing they wouldn’t have time to block it. The room was filling with zombies before they located another door that opened into an older brick portion of the building. The contraption was more of a room divider than a door; there was no lock, but it did latch. The room was empty so there was nothing to pile, even if they had the time. Skit ran full bore to the other side of the room and panicked when the first door he came to was locked, so he rolled down to the next.

Lisa crab walked backward, providing cover fire in three-round bursts.
Fuck, what was I thinking coming out here without an army?

“Lisa, over here!” Skit shouted from behind her.

“Reloading!” she shouted back.

Skit pulled the .45 and fired five of the seven rounds into the heads of four Z’s before Lisa was back in action and next to him.

“Reload,” she said as they backed through the open door into absolute darkness.

There was a lock on the knob, so they engaged it before backing away toward the other side of the room. Lisa hit a switch and a tactical light on the end of her barrel fired up. Skit switched out his speed loader in the dim light then they started looking for an exit. The light shining on the door they had passed through showed that the frame was pushing inward.

Another door revealed itself in the dim light, and they hoped it was on an outside wall. Old brick buildings with long, narrow alleyways between them made up this part of town. Skit cracked the door open, only to close it again.

“Zombies.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know; seven, ten, or fifteen. It could be a hundred.”

“Okay, we gotta go for it.”

“What the f…”

“We can’t get trapped in here, Skit. We have to get out in the open where there might be help.”

Skit looked down at the revolver in his hand, even though he couldn’t see in the dark. Lisa could feel his trepidation, but he had held up well and took out four zombies as she reloaded. He could do this; she knew it.

“Hey, just guide and fire as I reload. We’ll make it.” As if to emphasize her encouragement, the crashing of old brick, brittle mortar, and a steel doorframe slammed into the room, flooding it with dim, dust-riddled light from the windows beyond. Runners hit the opening at full speed, instantly getting a bead on the two breathers by the exit.

Lisa burst out into the alley. She switched her M4 to single shot and started taking precision shots as she moved deeper into the alley and farther away from the door. It would take the creepers a while to find the exit, but those runners would only be seconds.

“Watch that exit!” she said, and Skit walked backward with the .45 readied.

The first runner came skidding around the doorframe, open arms flailing to keep its balance. Skit let his arms react and the creature dropped with one round to the head. The other was right behind and Skit fired again; once in the chest, slowing him down. The second higher in the chest, pushing it upright, and a third slammed through its chin. Lisa’s gun fired constantly behind him while he watched the second runner fall at his feet. Nothing followed it, but he was loath to turn his back on the door.

“Reloading!” Lisa shouted. That was Skit’s cue and he spun to cover her front, leaving his back exposed.

Lisa looked over his back at the third runner who burst out the doorway. It was an ending for one of their lives; she knew it. She couldn’t bring her gun up over Skit’s back in time, and Skit was almost empty and pointed away from the door.

The runner launched toward Skit’s back from three steps away. Time slowed as Lisa watched the competition between her rifle and the flashing teeth of the Z. She knew she wouldn’t make it with her rifle moving slower than the runner and a round not yet charged into the chamber.

Lisa had to pause and blink when the runner was suddenly gone, swept to the side by something black and covered in shit or blood. She heard a familiar growl as the zombie’s neck broke.

“Reload, Skit,” Lisa said as she watched the beast kill the zombie before turning and jumping on another.

A large canine covered in grime joined with the first creature, using their body weight to clear the entrance of the alley. Lisa shook her head and smiled as she grabbed Skit’s arm and guided him out onto the street. Lights from a Humvee blinded them for a second before the tires screeched and several reservists jumped out, firing at the pursuing horde.

Chapter Seven

Goin’ Big

The two Humvees backed up as a front-end loader, followed by a smaller skid loader, made the tight turn into the alley which easily contained the Z threat.

“Are you Lisa Reynolds?” one of the troopers asked.

“I am,” Lisa replied as she rubbed behind Tonka’s grime-coated ear. She took several beef sticks out of a pouch and handed them to the dog. The dog she didn’t recognize tried to get one but was too slow and looked up at Lisa expectantly. She was out, but Skit was able to offer his up and the dog, who was twice Tonka’s size, gladly accepted. Both looked like they had been through hell and showed multiple bite marks, proving in her mind that the virus was strictly a human thing.

“What can I do for you well-timed gentlemen?” Lisa asked.

“An Officer Krupp told us you would be in the area. He also mentioned that you would be interested in a little something we found when we were forced to bivouac downtown last night. Would you mind taking a look?”

“Not at all. Do you have any spare five-six rounds?”

“Affirmative, we have a couple of deuce and a halves around the corner loaded with ammo, and several mags right here you can have.”

“Perfect,” Lisa said as she and her group piled into the back of his Humvee.

The soldier didn’t have to drive far before he pulled into a newer section of the city where the buildings switched from older brick buildings to fancy glass and stucco. They let the soldiers enter first into what looked like a mannequin shop but had a catering sign outside. They went back into what was assumed to be the work area to find a scene from the depths of hell.

“Holy shit,” Skit said as they walked into the climate-controlled room that was surprisingly free of the odor of decomposition.

Lisa quickly scanned the room; it looked like it could be a meticulously cleaned butcher shop, except there was no livestock to be found. A couple of the Guard members posted up at opposing doors as the others chose to remain outside. Men and women were suspended, skinned or partially skinned, from meat hooks mounted on a ceiling track that could move them to a commissary kitchen in back. There they found fifty-gallon barrels labeled
hides
,
bones
, and
offal
.

Skit started to vomit as Lisa took it all in. She noted that most of the bodies had been there at least a week and had been stripped of all vital organs, leaving just coarse muscle. The room was a cooler temperature to age the carcasses, much like how a traditional butcher would treat beef. New corpses hung by the entrance and appeared to be field dressed like a hunter would do before bringing it to the meat locker.

Skit got control of himself as they approached a large stainless steel reach-in refrigerator. Lisa noticed a dehydrator running the length of the room appeared to be stuffed with meat and spices. Labels of an unknown jerky company were stacked neatly, waiting to be filled. Lisa thought she was going to lose her own lunch.

She inspected the label of the jerky package and marveled that it claimed to be over 90 percent hominid pith and byproducts. She tasted bile as it tried to rise to the surface before she could choke it back.

She suspected the good doctor to be a cannibal, but she didn’t expect him to be mass marketing it as a dried meat product. But to whom? Were there that many who were like him? How many people had savored the flavor of
Gramp’s Huntin’ Haul Jerky
? She thought back to the previous hour when she fed Tonka a beef stick, remembered it was a Slim Jim, and sighed in relief.

“Krupp, are you there?”

“Nope, this is Art; what can I help you with? Over.”

“We need to check our entire store for
Gramps Jerky
. If you find any, burn it.”

“Why, what’s up? Over.”

“It’s not beef, or elk, or buffalo, or whatever. I’ll explain later; just trust me, okay? Over.”

“Roger that. Over.”

“Out.” As Lisa slapped her radio back in its sheath, she noticed Skit staring wide-eyed at the labels. She was about to say something to him but was signaled by one of the soldiers that he had found something.

“This wasn’t here yesterday,” he said, pointing to a large computer-generated print out.

“No, it wasn’t. It was just taken this morning,” Lisa said as she looked at the image of her and Skit watching the racist group down the street, the flag holder being the only one in view. “Take a look at this and tell me what you think, Skit.”

“Think? What am I supposed to fucking think? Hanging with you has put me right into the sights of the Skinner.”

Lisa nodded her head. She couldn’t argue the point; he was right. Now they were both targets for Skinner and his dehydrator.

***

The horrors of the day were behind them, and Lisa was slipping into the soft chair in her own apartment with a cup of hot black coffee. She was ecstatic when she found not only the power to the building still on, but running water as well. The soldiers had cleared the building and found a couple of refugees on the second floor to be transported to the compound. She and Skit tried to relax as they digested the horrors found in Web’s workshop.

Skit startled her when he suddenly grabbed her hair and started lifting it up off her neck, his trained fingers reminding her of a salon back in Philly.

“You know it is all coming off, don’t you?”

“You don’t have to take it all off,” Lisa protested.

“If you don’t want to look like a goon, I do. Where they shaved for the stitches, combined with all of the Z’s who have yanked on it in the past couple of days, it does.”

She thought about it; from a purely safety point of view, she decided she should lose the hair.
Who knows, maybe I’ll like it.

“What the hell, it’ll grow back,” she said.

She leaned back and enjoyed the therapeutic systematic process that soon put her to sleep, which was too bad because she had been looking forward to harassing Skit more. She didn’t know why she felt so comfortable around the former drug dealer who had almost caved in her head, but she did. It was almost like she got him, understood what his intentions were.

***

Skit felt the rhythmic breathing of sleep as he finished her up and looked toward the grungy hounds that decorated her living room floor.

“Tonka, you’re next.”

The dog sat up and glared at him with a low growl. He realized that he had never even come close to touching the police dog before and this might be touch and go, but it had to be done.

“Come on, man. Don’t fight me on this,” Skit pleaded, and with a look of resignation, Tonka headed into the bathroom as his super huge buddy slept.

Skit found multiple bites on the police sergeant and spots where the hide was almost torn that he treated with peroxide and a little iodine. He dried him as best he could before going out and tackling the big boy, who had to be some sort of mastiff. He didn’t know where Tonka had hooked up with the large canine, but they seemed pretty attached. Tonka couldn’t help but get excited as Skit dragged the huge dog by his scruff to the bathroom.

The giant turned out to be nothing but a big baby who licked Skit’s face with his oversized tongue every chance it got.

“Sedgwick, huh?” Skit said as he read the name etched into the tag on his collar. “I think we’ll get along just fine, Sedge.”

The dog rewarded Skit with another tongue cleaning to his face. Drying the beast was not an option; as soon as he was released from the shower, he ran full speed around the apartment.

“Throw your clothes out the door and put these on when you’re done with your shower.” Lisa, who had awoken with the running horse in her living room, handed him a set of sweats. “I am crawling into bed for a while. You can have the couch. There is whiskey or vodka above the sink and there may be a beer in the fridge.”

“Cool, thanks.”

***

The sun rose hot and bright on the third day of the zombie apocalypse. Lisa switched on her radio after her first pot of coffee was ready and ran her hand over her recently shaved head. It was strangely refreshing, and the way the breeze penetrated to her scalp made her feel kind of naked.

She heard the rumble of diesel engines as people from the compound worked to ensure her neighborhood was cleared. It wasn’t an order or anything planned by her; the people cleaning up the neighborhood knew where she was and wanted to make sure she was safe. She thought it was ridiculous, while the people doing it felt it was essential for the survival of Hot Springs. Lisa was their icon, their leader in the minds of the people, and they would lay down their lives for her. Lisa thought she was a sham and really had no say in what happened.

“Art, are ya up yet? Over,” Lisa said into the radio.

A voice came over the radio. “Up yet? Who’s had the chance to go to bed? Over.”

“So are there any status updates? Over.”

“Yeah, unfortunately, we have run into some snags. Almost two thousand showed up at the compound overnight. Luckily, enough of them are soldiers bearing weapons but it’s stretched the hospital pretty thin on everything. Local pharmacies have been raided by both us and fringe groups who haven’t come in yet, so we’re finding it hard to get a lot of what we need, from insulin to antibiotics, over.”

“So what’s the plan? Over.”

“The plan is to send a small force into Little Rock, where there are a couple of big hospitals, to get what we need. We’re discussing the details right now. Over,” Benson said as he looked around the room filled with members from both of the decision-making groups formed the day before.

“I guess I don’t know what you are thinking there, Art. Over,” Lisa said, not realizing that her words were being broadcast to the entire room and anyone else who had a radio that picked up their signal, including Tasha at the radio station.

“What do you mean? We need the supplies desperately. Over.”

“I know that, but if I’ve learned anything from Brett over the last couple of days it’s go big or go the fuck home. Over.” Lisa shook her head at the thought of a small group going into the largest city in Arkansas.

“Excuse me? I think you need to clarify that, Lieutenant. Over.” Lisa didn’t miss the fact that he referred to her by title instead of name; he was pissed at her, but she couldn’t worry about that.

“If one of us goes, Benson, we all go. If we need one resource, we need all resources. Over.”

“I don’t see how that is a possibility, Lieutenant. Over.”

“A few days ago
zombies
weren’t a possibility, Art. Sending a few specialized personnel into Little Rock would be sentencing half of them to death for the smatterings that could be carried out on their backs. Not a good plan.” There it was, out on the table. “We need to set up a convoy of semi tractors—no trailers because we will find some—and shooters to leave the day after tomorrow. We need to hit that city for everything it is worth. We need food, clothing, skid loaders, and most of all, any survivors. It’s only going to get worse out here and we have to be proactive in acquiring what we need. Resources have a shelf life and at three days into this thing, a lot of those resources have already spoiled. Over.”

“How are we going to do that when we still haven’t secured the city? Over.”

“We’re going to have to manage. Have Brett step up the pace on the Hot Springs recovery. Have Tasha at the radio station put out a call to all survivors and the farmers to accompany us while on the road to Little Rock. We need to set up some major distractions to clear out areas where our people can get in and out unharassed. The task may seem impossible, but we are going to fucking do it, Art. We can’t fuck around with this shit; we have to hit it and hit it hard because zombies don’t understand soft. Any questions? Over.”

“Nope, I think we got it. When will you be back? Over.”

“A couple of hours; we should be able to hitch a ride with one of the Humvees that keep buzzing around my building. Over.”

“Roger that, we’ll see you then. Out.”

Benson turned off the radio and looked around a room filled with grim faces, with the exception of two. Brett, who had been saying the same thing Lisa just said, had a smile that registered just above a smirk. The other was Krupp, who stood off to the side with one foot propped up on a chair and his arm supporting his leaning body.

“What’s so funny, Krupp?”

“I think I am in love. Damn, that chick must have gone to profanity school or something,” Krupp said, lightening the mood and causing everyone to laugh.

“So you agree with her?” Benson asked.

“Absolutely. We have to start treating things as if we own them and have every right to be there. Little Rock is ours and we gotta let the zombies know it.”

“Okay, how do we do it?”

“Well, we leave most of the equipment operators that we have working here to keep doing what they are doing and leave a few shooters behind, probably locals more than military. Military is trained to fight and move. We start training people to drive some of these bigger rigs today so that we can double up on drivers and bring more semis home. We also have to acquire some ordnance for the distractions we'll need.”